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According to Bloomberg, Internet-connected CCTV cameras made by a Chinese firm, Hangzhou Xiongmai Technology Co., were infected with malware that allowed hackers to takeover “tens of millions” of devices to launch the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

A Chinese security camera maker said its products were used to launch a cyber-attack that severed internet access for millions of users, highlighting the threat posed by the global proliferation of connected devices.

The attackers hijacked CCTV cameras made by Hangzhou Xiongmai Technology Co. using malware known as Mirai, the company said in an e-mailed statement. While Xiongmai didn’t say how many of its products had been infiltrated, all cameras made before September 2015 were potentially vulnerable.

The attack, which took down sites including Twitter, Spotify and CNN for long stretches, underscored how hackers can marshal an increasing number of online gadgets, collectively known as the Internet of Things, to disrupt the internet on an unprecedented scale.

“Mirai is a huge disaster for the Internet of Things. XM have to admit that our products also suffered from hacker’s break-in and illegal use,” Xiongmai said in its e-mail.

Security professionals have anticipated an increase in attacks from malware that target connected gadgets. In Friday’s instance, hackers launched a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack using tens of millions of malware-infected devices connected to the internet, according to Kyle York, Dyn’s chief strategy officer.

The United States, stung by the rapid deterioration in relations with its longtime ally, the Philippines, now stands on the precipice of losing another strategic ally in Asia. Reports that the much-revered king of Thailand, Bhumibol Adulyadej, who has sat on the throne for 70 years and is 88-years old, is gravely ill have prompted a belief that Thailand will join the Philippines in rejecting American dictates.

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, the former mayor of Davao City in Mindanao, stunned the Obama administration by cozying up to China in the South China Sea maritime dispute. Duterte followed up his independent foreign policy by inviting China and Russia to establish bases in the Philippines, canceling further U.S.-Philippines military exercises in the region, and calling President Barack Obama a “son of a whore.” Durtete also told the United States, “Do not treat us like a doormat because you’ll be … We aren’t ‘little brown brothers of America.'”

The Obama administration’s trouble with Duterte began after U.S. ambassador to the Philippines Philip Goldberg began interfering in the domestic affairs of the Philippines, including the election that propelled Duterte into office. Goldberg has a history of involving himself in the affairs of countries where he is posted. In 2008, the Bolivian government of President Evo Morales expelled Goldberg, the U.S. ambassador, for stoking secessionist movements in four Bolivian provinces. In August of this year, Duterte called Goldberg a “bakla” son-of-a-bitch. Bakla is Tagalog for “gay.”

Upon the Thai king’s death, what has happened in the Philippines could see an instant replay in Thailand. Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, the heir to the throne, is known to be close to former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his sister, former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, both of whom were ousted in military coups engineered by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Thaksin was overthrown in 2006 and Yingluck in 2014. Yingluck, who was accused of corruption by Thailand’s “anti-graft” agency, saw essentially the same treatment as meted out to Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, and Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo.

Thaksin and Yingluck continue to enjoy wide support from the largely rural-based “Red Shirt” movement of Thailand. Vajiralongkorn is not popular with the loyal subjects of his father. In order to garner support for his reign, Vajiralongkorn may have to conclude a pact with not only Thaksin and Yingluck but also the Red Shirts, among whose ranks are a number of anti-monarchists. The Red Shirts are also opposed to American hegemony over Thailand and are suspected of receiving support from China.

Today, rather than use tanks and military juntas to overthrow leaders it does not like, the CIA relies on phalanxes of lawyers and judges, all controlled by the CIA, to bring about “constitutional coups.” This has been a hallmark of the Obama administration and could be called the “Obama Doctrine.” This doctrine proves more than anything else that Obama is nothing more than a product of CIA talent-spotting and grooming over the three decades he spent in Indonesia, Hawaii, Los Angeles, Pakistan, New York, and Chicago.

The Obama Doctrine has not been lost on Duterte and will not be lost on future King Vajiralongkorn. Bhumibol, who was born in the United States, succeeded to the throne on the death of his brother, King Ananda Mahidol. At 9:00 am on June 9, 1946, Bhumibol visited his brother in his bedroom at the Royal Palace in Bangkok. At 9:20 am, a shot rang out from the king’s bedroom. Ananda was found lying face up in bed with a fatal gun shot wound to the head. The cause was determined to be accidental suicide caused by the young king playing with a loaded pistol.

The U.S. ambassador to Thailand was Edwin Stanton. Ironically, his namesake, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, continues to be accused of involvement in the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.

Ambassador Stanton worked with the Japanese-appointed Regent of Thailand, Pridi Banomyong, who ruled the country while Ananda was in exile during World War II and who became prime minister after the war, to absolve Bhumibol and the United States and Britain of any involvement in the king’s death. The British Viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten, thought Ananda was a “pathetic” figure and not worthy of being a king. In any event, after Field Marshal Plaek Pibulsonggram, the pro-Japanese military leader of Thailand during the war, overthrew Prime Minister Pridi in 1947, the government charged two royal pages with the assassination of the king. Both the pages were ultimately found guilty and executed.

Stanton had successfully convinced Prime Minister Pridi that Communists disguised as students, Buddhist monks, journalists, and academicians were invading Thailand with the intent of overthrowing the monarchy. Stanton’s warnings were a ruse and none of the reports of Communist “infiltration” were true.

Many people in Thailand know that it was the pre-CIA Office of Strategic Services (OSS) that carried out the assassination of Ananda with the connivance of U.S. ambassador Stanton, U.S. chargé d’affaires Charles Yost, the British MI-6 station in Bangkok, and the OSS chief in Bangkok James “Jim” Thompson. After “officially” leaving the OSS, Thompson founded the Thai Silk Company, Ltd., which helped to revitalize Thailand’s war-ravaged silk industry. Thompson was also a notorious pedophile whose house guests in Bangkok always included a number of Thai and Burmese children. The house, itself, was adorned with a number of phallic statues. Authors Truman Capote; Somerset Maugham; and Margaret Landon, the author of Anna and the King of Siam, upon which the movie “The King and I” was based. were among Thompson’s famous guests in Bangkok. In 1967, Thompson, who knew where many of the CIA skeletons were buried, disappeared without a trace in the Cameron Highlands in Pahang, Malaya.

Since King Ananda’s assassination by the OSS and MI-6, Thailand has been ruled by a series of CIA-installed and Thai military-backed puppets, with only a very few exceptions.

For seventy years, the Thai people have only been able to whisper about the events of 1946. With the king’s passing, there will be scores that will have to be settled with the United States and Philippines President Duterte has shown Thailand that Asian nations that have long been under the jackboot of Uncle Sam can also kick out from their countries the bearded caricature who, for Asians, represents militarism, pedophilia, and subversion.

The loss of the Philippines and Thailand to Obama’s grand militaristic design for Asia, known as the “Pivot to Asia,” will represent the final nails in the coffin of America’s 70 year suzerainty over East and Southeast Asia.

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Michael Cook reports for MercatorNet, Nov. 9, 2015, that in a 2009 report, Ready, Willing, And Unable To Serve, more than 450 retired generals and admirals in a lobby group called Mission Readiness concluded that young Americans are “too fat to fight” and that “The best aircraft, ships and satellite-guided weaponry alone will not be enough to keep our country strong”.

According to the report:

Startling statistics released by the Pentagon show that 75 percent of young people ages 17 to 24 are currently unable to enlist in the United States military. Three of the most common barriers for potential recruits are failure to graduate high school, a criminal record, and physical fitness issues, including obesity.

Obesity is one of the main reasons why more than 70 percent of young Americans are unable to serve in today’s military. This includes young adults in families with generations of military service, and others who have the critical skills our military needs but cannot join simply because of too many extra pounds.

There are 3 reasons for why 75% of young Americans are unfit to serve in the U.S. military:

Inadequate education: About 25% of young Americans lack a high school diploma. Even those who have one, many are substandard at reading and mathematics, which explains why as many as 30% of potential recruits with a diploma fail the Armed Forces Qualification Test.

Criminal records:About 10% of young U.S. adults are disqualified because they have had at least one prior conviction for a felony or serious misdemeanour. According to the Pew Center on the States, “One in 30 [American young] men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars.”

Obesity and other health problems: 27% of young Americans are too fat to join the military. Many never even try to join. But of those who do, 15,000 fail their entrance physicals every year because they are too fat. Another 32% of all young people have other disqualifying health problems –asthma, eyesight or hearing problems, mental health issues, or recent treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. In total, half of young U.S. adults cannot join because of health problems.

Study after study show that the best early education program is a stable home with a loving mother and father. But the Obama administration’s Pentagon, instead of realising that young Americans need the strength and security that comes from intact biological families, recommend the usual government solution — better early education programs, better school meals, and better physical education programs. What the Pentagon refuses to say for politically correct reasons, is that America’s national security is at risk because America’s families are dysfunctional.

This is emphasized by a 2014 report by Brad Wilcox and Robert I. Lerman for the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies, which concluded that:

“what is largely missing from the public conversation about economics in America is an honest discussion of the family factor. The retreat from marriage … plays a key role in the changing economic fortunes of American family life. Growing up with both parents (in an intact family) is strongly associated with more education, work, and income among today’s young men and women.”

And they make better soldiers, too.

Retired Rear Admiral James Barnett said, “Our national security in the year 2030 is absolutely dependent upon what is going on in pre-kindergarten today.” In healthy families, kids learn to respect authority, value education and take responsibility for their health. They learn how to cooperate and to work as a team. They build a stronger moral sense. And all this costs the taxpayer nothing, unlike the government-funded programs recommended by the retired generals and admirals.

But after two generations of me-centred marriages and unstable families, America’s human capital increasingly is degraded. The introduction of same-sex marriage would only accelerate the process. As The Economist says about the challenges ahead: “The result is that America may be unable, within reasonable cost limits and without reinstituting the draft, to raise the much bigger army it might need for such wars.”

At the moment, the Pentagon relies upon a weak job market to lure young men and women into the services. But it worries and should worry about what will happen when the economy eventually picks up.

Lastly, America’s obese young are not just bad for the military, they constitute a looming national health crisis.

Time magazine reports that researchers at a recent American Heart Association annual meeting in Florida warned that excess weight in children can lead to potentially harmful changes in the hearts of kids as young as 8.

Linyuan Jing, a post doctoral fellow from the Geisinger Health System, and her colleagues studied 20 obese children—i.e., those with a body mass index over 35, whereas a healthy range is 18.5 to 25—and 20 normal-weight children. All had MRIs of their hearts.

The researchers found that obese children:

have 12% thicker heart muscle overall compared to the normal-weight children.Thicker heart muscle means the heart is working harder to pump blood. Previous studies have linked thickened heart muscle in adults to premature death from heart-related causes.

show 27% thicker left ventricles, the chamber of the heart responsible for pumping blood to the body.

show signs of having less cardiac muscle contractility, which is a possible early sign of decreased heart function.

Jing said, “It’s surprising to see evidence of heart disease among eight year olds. Because that implies that children younger than eight could have signs of heart disease as well.”

As China’s economy continues to transition from agrarian to industrial, it only gets worse from here. Furthermore, it’s pretty much axiomatic that the more the Chinese government attempts to centrally-manage production and distribution of this resource, the more problems will occur. — Displacedjim

China’s water stress set to worsen with transfer initiatives

by Staff Writers

Norwich, UK (SPX) Jan 13, 2015

New research paints a grim picture for the future of China’s water supply, as its booming economy continues to heap pressure on its natural resources, according to scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA), the University of Leeds and other international institutions.

Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) compiles for the first time a full inventory of physical water transfers and ‘virtual’ water redistribution via trade between China’s provinces.

The study determined that water stress is only partially mitigated by China’s current two-pronged approach: physical water transfers to water-depleted regions, including the major South-North water transfer projects, or the ‘virtual’ water embodied in traded products between regions and countries.

Moreover, the efforts are exacerbating water stress for China’s poorer water-exporting regions, with virtual water transfers accounting for more than one-third of the country’s national water supply. Up to 65 per cent of the water supply in some provinces is earmarked for virtual water redistribution, to be used for infrastructure and for producing exports.

Until China significantly improves its water use efficiency and addresses the impact its expanding economy is having on its natural resources, the situation will continue to deteriorate, the researchers conclude.

An international effort led by the Beijing Forestry University (China), UEA and Leeds (UK) and the University of Maryland (US), the research analyses data from 2007 and looks ahead to China’s water distribution plans in 2030.

Water stress is likely to become more severe in the main water-exporting provinces, based on policy initiatives aimed at boosting development in wealthier regions to meet consumption demands.

Prof Dabo Guan of UEA’s School of International Development said: “China needs to shift its focus to water demand management instead of a supply oriented approach if it is going to seriously address the overwhelming pressures on its water supplies.

“China’s current transfer programme is pouring good water after bad: the problems of water-stressed regions aren’t being alleviated and the provinces sharing their water are suffering greatly.”

Prof Guan, professor in climate change economics, together with his colleague, Prof Martin Tillotson of Leeds, published research in 2014 showing 75 per cent of China’s lakes and rivers and 50 per cent of its groundwater supplies are contaminated, the result of urban household consumption, export of goods and services and infrastructure investment.

Prof Tillotson, chair in water management and director of water@leeds, said: “Even allowing for future efficiency gains in agricultural and industrial water consumption, China’s water transfers are likely to be insufficient to offset increased demand due to the effects of economic and population growth.

“A much greater focus needs to be placed on regulating or incentivising reductions in demand-led consumption.”

The Soufan Group, a New York-based intelligence outfit, reckons that by the end of May as many as 12,000 fighters from 81 nations had joined the fray [Islamic State], among them some 3,000 from the West (see chart above). The number today is likely to be a lot higher. Since IS declared a caliphate on June 29th, recruitment has surged.Syria has drawn in fighters faster than in any past conflict, including the Afghan war in the 1980s or Iraq after the Americans invaded in 2003. […]

Most Western fighters are men under 40, but this war has attracted more women than past causes. Some 10-15% of those travelling to Syria from some Western countries are female, reckons Peter Neumann of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR), a London-based think-tank. As many as 30 may have gone from Sweden alone. Some hope to marry, others join all-female units to ensure that women in areas under IS control obey the strictest version of Islamic rules, such as covering up; a few take part in battles.

IS is not the only group Westerners join, but it is the most appealing thanks to its global outlook, which includes spreading the caliphate across the world, to its attempts to implement immediate sharia law—and to the glow of its military success.In a five-part documentary filmed in Raqqa by Vice, a news website, as a guest of IS, the group’s religious police are shown educating Syrians, running courts, indoctrinating children and putting on public entertainment.

The motives of those going to fight are as varied as their passports. In the early days of the war in Syria, foreigners wanted to help their fellow Muslims, by bringing them food and medicine, or by fighting alongside them.Governments throughout the West were saying that President Bashar Assad and his atrocities must be stopped. Doctors such as Abbas Khan, a Briton, travelled to rebel-held Aleppo—only to be killed in Syrian custody after being captured by Mr Assad’s forces.

Since then the fight has become bloodier and more sectarian. Civilians have died in the tens of thousands—the UN says at least 190,000 Syrians have been killed—and rebel crimes have become more frequent. As a result the war is drawing in more extreme types. Those who talked of defending Syrians now deny that the land belongs to the locals, says Shiraz Maher of ICSR. “Bilad al-Sham”, or Greater Syria, has a special status in Islam because it appears in end-of-time prophecies. It belongs to Allah, fighters declare. But what if Syrians do not want Islamic law? “It’s not up to them, because it’s for Islam to implement Islamic rule,” says the European fighter who says he left his home country because it was not Islamic enough. He says he wants to “educate rather than behead Syrians”.

IS is the most extreme manifestation of a Muslim response to the history of the past few centuries when the West has been seen to thrive as the Muslim world has declined. One line of thinking blames this on the absence of a caliphate—the last one was abolished by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey’s secular moderniser, in 1924—and of sharia rule. Most of IS’s ideas and all of its gorier methods are rejected by most Muslims, who see the group simply as criminal. But it does draw on Islamic theology, arguing—for instance—that non-Muslims should pay jizya, a special tax.

Poverty does not explain the lure of jihad for Western fighters. Many of them are quite middle-class. Nasser Muthana, a 20-year-old Welshman who goes by the name Abu Muthana al-Yemeni in IS videos, had offers to study medicine from four universities. Nor does a failure to integrate into the societies around them.Photographs of Muhammad Hamidur Rahman, another British fighter thought to have recently been killed, show a young man in a snazzy suit with a slick hairstyle. He worked at Primark, a cheap retailer, in Portsmouth, a city on the English coast. His father ran a curry restaurant. Nor does religious piety. Before leaving for Syria, Yusuf Sarwar and Mohammed Ahmed, two young men from Birmingham who pleaded guilty to terrorism offences in July, ordered copies of “Islam for Dummies” and “The Koran for Dummies” from Amazon. Some fighters are religious novices, says Mr Maher.

More plausible explanations are the desire to escape the ennui of home and to find an identity. “Some individuals are drawn out there because there is not a lot going on in their own lives,” says Raffaello Pantucci, an analyst at the Royal United Services Institute, a London think-tank. Images of combatants playing snooker, eating sweets and splashing in swimming pools have sometimes suggested that jihad was not unlike a student holiday, without the booze. For young men working in dead-end jobs in drab towns, the brotherhood, glory and guns seem thrilling. Many of Belgium’s fighters come from the dullest of cities, where radicals have concentrated their efforts to get recruits. […]

Many say they feel more comfortable in a country where the way of life is Islamic—even if not yet Islamic enough—and have no plans to leave or carry out attacks elsewhere. “I am much happier here—got peace of mind,” says the European fighter. […]

Coming back home is far from simple. Western authorities have some idea of who has gone and notice them when they return. […]

Yet the jihadists’ return is just what Western governments fear. So far foreigners such as Douglas McCain, who recently became the first American known to have died fighting for IS, seem to have focused on fighting in Syria and Iraq rather than at home. More likely are lone-wolf attacks, such as the murder last year of Lee Rigby, a British soldier, by two jihadists in London. Mehdi Nemmouche, a French-Algerian who was arrested on suspicion of having shot and killed four people at the Jewish Museum in Brussels earlier this year, is believed to have spent a year fighting in Syria. Such attacks are much harder for security services to predict and stop.

So far the responses of Western governments to their citizens’ self-deployment have varied. America has cracked down on anyone it suspects of going to fight. It can afford to do so, argues Mr Hegghammer, because its Muslim population is smaller than that of many European countries, as is the fear of a political backlash. European governments have been more cautious. Their citizens have travelled out with ease. Harsher penalties might deter some. But prosecute too widely and governments may end up boosting the flow of recruits. And prisons have proved fertile recruitment grounds for Muslim radicals.

Deradicalisation programmes, such as those run by Saudi Arabia and Sweden, have mixed results. Most successful, in Britain at least, have been attempts by the so-called Channel programme, part of the British government’s counter-terrorism strategy, to divert young people from extremism. Such efforts, with police, social services and local authorities working together, draw on methods used to help young people leave gangs.

And not all of those returning will have blood on their hands. Governments need to offer a way out for those who realise they have made a mistake, says Mr Neumann. Western countries may even benefit from a softer approach. Chastened returning fighters may be the very people to persuade more young men to forgo the fight. But no one yet knows whether today’s European jihadists fighting for IS will become tomorrow’s murderers on the streets of London, Paris or New York.

As the term is used in contemporary America, a “false flag” incident is some traumatic public event that is:

False: The public are given an untruthful version of the event by the government and the media.

Results in a “rallying around the flag” effect: The objective is to arouse and manipulate the emotions (fear, anger, outrage, indignation) of the American people so that they’ll “rally around the flag” in an outburst of patriotism, supplying the current White House occupant and his (and his party’s) policies with their support and loyalty.

Admiral James “Ace” Lyons (US Navy, Ret.), 86, an officer of the U.S. Navy for 36 years, is the former Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet (1985-1987) — the largest single military command in the world. Today he is a columnist for The Washington Times and the chairman of the Center for Security Policy’s Military Committee. He is…

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San Jose PG&E power substation. What was initially described as “vandalism” is now being investigated as “terrorism.”

Ryan Gorman reports for the Daily Mail that the FBI was investigating a “military-style” attack on a California electric power facility on April 16, 2013.

Foreign Policy has a detailed account of the well-planned attack, in which as many as two gunmen stormed the PG&E Metcalf substation in a San Jose suburb at 1 a.m., severing landline and cell phone service so that PG&E employees had no means to call for help.

The gunmen fired more than 100 rounds from high-powered rifles at many transformers, damaging 10 in one area and three transformer banks in another. Cooling oil leaking from at least one transformer bank caused transformers to overheat and shut down. This led officials to warn locals to conserve energy, but no major power outages occurred, nor were there major damage or injuries. However, substation equipment was damaged and underground fiber optic cables nearby were severed.

A senior intelligence official told Foreign Policy that “Initially, the attack was being treated as vandalism and handled by local law enforcement. However, investigators have been quoted in the press expressing opinions that there are indications that the timing of the attacks and target selection indicate a higher level of planning and sophistication.”

A PG&E official told Foreign Policy the attack was “not amateurs taking potshots… this was a dress rehearsal.”

Today, Feb. 5, 2014, KPIX CBS5 reports that the former head of theFederal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Jon Wellinghoff believes the attack on a PG&E substation in South San Jose last spring was not an act of vandalism, but instead a terrorist attack.

In an interview in the Wall Street Journal, Wellinghoff called the attack ”the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred.” Wellinghoff said he’s going public with his concerns because he believes national security is at risk and that thousands of U.S. electrical utility sites are poorly protected.

Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith told reporters at the time the objective of the attack appeared to have been “shutting down the system.” But the FBI says it does not think a terrorist organization carried out the gunfire attack on the San Jose substation.

Meanwhile, the FBI is also investigating a series of attacks on the Arkansas power grid where multiple high-voltage transmission lines were severed and one substation was set on fire, according to the New York Times.

“You should have expected U.S.” was scribbled on a control panel at the torched substation.

There is no indication the attacks in Arkansas and California are related.

UPDATE (Feb. 7, 2014):

The Wall St. Journal reports (via FoxNews) that Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she and fellow senators plan to ask the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which has jurisdiction over the electric grid’s reliability, to “set minimum security standards for critical substations.” One proposal being discussed in Congress is would give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission the power to write and impose interim rules on grid defenses. The utility industry would still be able to influence any permanent requirements.

Some utility industry executives told the WSJ it would be difficult to come up with rules for improving security that would work in both urban and rural areas. Lisa Barton, executive vice president of transmission for American Electric Power, said increasing protections could be costly and that “One size fits all may not get you true resiliency. I’m not saying it isn’t worth it.”

Attn: Pyongyang and Beijing!

The Missile Defense Agency (MDA), U.S. Pacific Command, and U.S. Navy sailors aboard the USS Lake Erie (CG 70) successfully conducted an operational flight test of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system, resulting in the intercept of a medium-range ballistic missile target over the Pacific Ocean by the Aegis BMD 4.0 Weapon System and a Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IB guided missile.

At approximately 7:33 p.m. Hawaii Standard Time, Oct. 3 (1:33 a.m. EDT, Oct.4), a medium-range ballistic missile target was launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai, Hawaii. The target flew northwest towards a broad ocean area of the Pacific Ocean. Following target launch, the USS Lake Erie detected and tracked the missile with its onboard AN/SPY-1 radar. The ship, equipped with the second-generation Aegis BMD weapon system, developed a fire control solution and launched the SM-3 Block IB guided missile to engage the target. The SM-3 maneuvered to a point in space and released its kinetic warhead. The kinetic warhead acquired the target reentry vehicle, diverted into its path, and, using only the force of a direct impact, engaged and destroyed the target.

Program officials will assess and evaluate system performance based upon telemetry and other data obtained during the test.

This test exercised the latest version of the second-generation Aegis BMD Weapon System, capable of engaging longer range and more sophisticated ballistic missiles.

FTM-22 is the 28th successful intercept in 34 flight test attempts for the Aegis BMD program since flight testing began in 2002. Across all Ballistic Missile Defense System programs, this is the 64th successful hit-to-kill intercept in 80 flight test attempts since 2001.

Aegis BMD is the naval component of the MDA’s Ballistic Missile Defense System. The Aegis BMD engagement capability defeats short- to intermediate-range, unitary and separating, midcourse-phase ballistic missile threats with the SM-3, as well as short-range ballistic missiles in the terminal phase with the Standard Missile-2 (SM-2) Block IV missile. The MDA and the U.S. Navy cooperatively manage the Aegis BMD program.